


The Ethics of Narcissism in the Afterlife: A Case Study in Rortian Pragmatism

by Mosca



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Blow Jobs, Dry Academic Prose, F/M, Footnotes, Philosophy, Richard Rorty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-15 22:20:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13040628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mosca/pseuds/Mosca
Summary: The postmodern, relativist pragmatism of Richard Rorty seems to facilitate a more universally accessible ethics by rejecting top-down ethical mandates and the notion of moral certainty in favor of an adaptable approach founded upon concepts of hope, utility, and restorative efficacy. This claim to accessibility is tested by individuals such as E. S., whose fundamental narcissism should, under more traditional ethical frameworks, preclude the development of a coherent ethics. However, as this case study reveals, E. S.'s adherence to the Rortian paradigm allows her to develop a consistent and functional ethical approach without forcing her to first address her inflated sense of self. The case of E. S. reveals Rortian pragmatism as a tool for introducing ethics to the naturally resistant, and as an argument against the exclusion of narcissistic individuals from ethical dialogues.





	The Ethics of Narcissism in the Afterlife: A Case Study in Rortian Pragmatism

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Raven (singlecrow)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/gifts).



> This article has been accepted for publication, pending revisions, to the _Journal of Moral Philosophy_ , on behalf of its late author, Chidi Anagonye.
> 
> Acknowledgements:
> 
> The author wishes to thank the following esteemed colleagues for their contributions to this study: D. L. T., RAHM Academy of the Humanities (Moscow); F. N. P., Bock University; L. S., Sondheim-Bernstein Theological Institute; S. C. R., Koberia College; and L. W., National Cognitive Inquiry Society of Los Angeles.

**Introduction**

 

Can a narcissist ever be truly ethical? Most ethical frameworks construct narcissism as a disordered self-positioning, whether in relation to the social apparatus or in relation to a governing higher power. Plato himself regards selfishness as “the most serious vice innate in most men’s souls,” and if not the root of all evil, then at least the impetus for all crime:

  

> It is truer to say that the cause of each and every crime that we commit is precisely the excessive love of ourselves, a love which blinds us to the faults of the beloved and makes us bad judges of goodness and beauty and justice, because we believe we should honor our own ego rather than the truth.1

 Subsequent Platonists have extrapolated from this a post-Freudian conception of narcissism as antithetical to the chief Platonic ethical goal of justice. Most notably, Lear interprets the eradication of narcissism as a necessary side effect of becoming just and therefore ethical, within Plato’s worldview. As Lear explains, the lack of an externally observable ideal _polis_ requires that the philosopher  internally create the conditions of perfect justice.  In order to understand justice - and therefore ethics - the philosopher must subsume narcissistic impulses to reason.2 Thus, an ethical narcissist is impossible, because the knowledge of ethics should and must reveal the irrationality of narcissism and motivate the philosopher to shed that fault.

 

As Western thought progressed through centuries of reliance on extrinsic, theological mandates to formulate its ethics, the argument against narcissism was rendered trivial. The imperative of altruism as the ultimate virtue positioned narcissistic thought and behavior as accordingly sinful. If selflessness for its own sake does not appeal to the individual, the motivation to avoid narcissism arises from fear of punishment. Nonetheless, the more reflective strains of Christian thought consistently perceive virtuous and ethical behavior as a corrective for narcissistic impulses, an observation that continues into even recent scholarship. Paul Rigby has identified Augustine of Hippo’s “confessional medium” as an impetus for collective asceticism, generating “a community of confessors” who, in expressing grief, remorse, and penance as appropriate, eschew individualistic spirituality in favor of collective grace.3

 

Enlightenment philosophers appeared to move beyond ethical constructions centered around faith, but they retained the presupposition of a higher-order and predefined morality. Most Enlightenment philosophy clung to the centrality of mind-body duality, framing consciousness and rational thought as the unique domains of humanity that enabled ethical behavior. Rene Descartes, in his _Meditations,_ claims to provide rational proof of the existence of a discrete and universal human soul, a claim that has been subsequently derided even by those who by and large subscribe to Cartesian constructions of the self. In Descartes’ own time, Marin Mersenne raised the objection that “it does not seem to follow from the fact that the mind is distinct from the body that it is incorruptible or immortal,” 4 to which Descartes responded that only God could provide a definitive answer. For philosophers like Descartes and Mersenne, the immortality of the soul was a justification for rational and mathematical inquiry, and indeed a justification of the virtue of such intellectual pursuits.

 

Even Hegel, so strident in his rejection of a theistic morality, centered his arguments for rationality around the concept of an empirically identifiable best possible world, to which reason will lead anyone who follows rational precepts. Rather than rejecting the concept of good and evil as stable values, Hegel urges the acceptance of momentary evils as part of a greater good, without questioning whether those evils are, indeed, evil. As Wood explains in his exploration of Hegel’s ethical framework, 

 

>  [Hegel] tries to console us by showing that what we antecedently recognize as evils may be required if the best of all possible worlds is to be brought about, and providing us with completely general reasons for thinking that whatever evils we find are indeed an indispensable part of the best world.5

 Hegel does not challenge the concept of evil; rather, he accepts it as a component of an ideal world that is not perfectly good, but only optimally so.

 

The Utilitarianism of the 18th and 19th centuries emerged as a reaction to philosophical frameworks that aspired to empirical, universal rules. Jeremy Bentham began the discussion with a precept both alluring in its simplicity and troubling in its implications: ethical actions are those which most promote the “greatest aggregate happiness” of human beings. John Stuart Mill refined this precept by connecting it to politics and economics, and his applications to questions of human rights such as gender equality and freedom of expression have particularly resonated with post-Utilitarian pragmatists such as Rorty.

 

Rorty’s greatest influence, however,  is the American psychologist and pragmatist philosopher John Dewey, who explicitly drew the connection between a philosophy directed toward the increase of human happiness and the project of social change. Dewey contends that philosophical inquiry is important precisely because it goes against human nature: “Man ceases to be primarily actuated by hopes and fears, loves and hates, only when he is subjected to a discipline which is foreign to human nature, which is, from the standpoint of natural man, artificial.”6 Whereas empirical philosophers decry flaws such as narcissism as problems to be fixed through moral guidance, Dewey perceives them as the inherent conditions of human experience, and proposes education and inquiry as paths toward more sophisticated - and more moral - states of being.

  
Rorty continues Dewey’s project of marrying philosophy and social justice, and of divorcing philosophy from moral judgment. The point, Rorty would say, is not to be right, but to be interesting and productive. This requires a mental flexibility that Rorty acknowledges is difficult to achieve, but which he claims is necessary: after all, “Human beings, like computers, dogs, and works of art, can be described in lots of different ways, depending on what you want to do with them.”7 Earlier generations of utilitarians and pragmatists shifted ethical aims from the hierarchical to the experiential, and Rorty blurs those aims further, approaching Bentham’s greater good as a target that changes form depending on what the inquirer wishes to accomplish. Rorty pushes his reader toward ethical goals that prevent human suffering, but he does not require those goals. He frequently decries philosophical approaches that promote or excuse self-centeredness, but like Dewey, he does not blame humans for their flaws - only their way of thinking.

**Methodology**

 

While the author had initially hoped to conduct a more extensive survey of ethical development among narcissistic students of philosophy, he restricted himself to a single, ongoing, in-depth case study due to environmental limitations. Specifically, the author has been confined to a unique, experimental arena of torture in the afterlife, in which he is able to interact with only three other humans. While all three exhibit characteristics of narcissism, E. S. was the only one to persist in her philosophical and ethical inquiry sufficiently to merit consideration in the current study.

 

The author’s current afterlife existence does provide one powerful research tool, in the form of Janet, the affable embodiment of an omniscient and near-omnipotent source of information and materials. Upon my request, Janet replayed both two-dimensional and three-dimensional video clips of events and conversations relevant to this study, and provided transcriptions of those whose verbatim inclusion would enhance the presentation of findings. All examples of word-for-word dialogue may be presumed to be Janet’s transcriptions.

 

**Findings and Discussion**

 

The psychiatric diagnosis of narcissism, applied to E. S., lies beyond the scope of this study. During E. S.’s lifetime, she never engaged the services of a psychiatric specialist. Upon learning that two of her companions had embarked upon a series of couples counseling sessions, E. S. remarked, “Shrinks are for sad losers who can’t get their own lives together, or at least find a way to self-medicate.” Nonetheless, when presented with a list of diagnostic criteria for narcissistic personality disorder,8 E. S. ticked them off proudly as representative of her own behavior and mindset. “I just don’t see where the disorder part comes in,” she remarked. “Most people aren’t worth caring about. I mean, most people are barely even _people._ ”

 

She went on to elucidate a detailed comparison between one of her companions, admittedly an individual of limited intelligence, and the pet dog of a former boyfriend. This comparison reiterated the distinction between narcissism and sociopathy, as E.S. continually recognized that both her companion and the dog deserved some measure of protection and continued well-being, even as she rejected all suggestion that these needs should be honored on a level equal to her own. “You know there are some things you just don’t do,” she said.

  

 

> Like, you don’t give [companion] fireworks, because eventually he’s going to figure out how to light them and blow his fingers off, and then you either have to drop everything to take him to the emergency room, which no one has time for, or you have to leave him there bleeding and crying, which isn’t really fair when it’s your fault for giving him the fireworks. It’s the same thing as when my ex fed the dog three ice cream sandwiches, and I told him, “The dog is just going to barf everywhere,” and an hour later, there I was, alone with a dog that was having a seizure, dropping the dog off at the emergency vet center and booking it, so I wouldn’t have to stick around if the forking thing died on me. I had to block my ex’s number on the way, too, which is a shame because the sex was _really good._

 

It is unclear to what extent environmental versus inherent factors have contributed to E. S.’ s narcissism. She is generally circumspect about her upbringing, although she has on several occasions alluded to a childhood characterized by neglect and parental substance abuse. For example, when one of her companions engaged in an interminable and nonsensical narrative involving turkey adobo and a stray dog named Spanky, E. S. interrupted, “For some of us, Thanksgiving was eating lunch meat out of the bag while your mother went for Wild Turkey instead. So stop boring us, okay?” Unlike some narcissists, who use such stories to manipulate others’ sympathy, E. S. was clearly attempting to truncate a conversation that was causing her emotional pain, while simultaneously dismissing it as uninteresting rather than traumatic.

 

One can infer through incidents such as the one above that E.S.’s narcissism is in large part a survival mechanism. Having learned from an early age that she herself was the only person upon whom she could rely, E.S. constructed an ethical framework that considered only her own needs. While Cartesian or neo-Platonic approaches to ethics regard such a framework as inherently degenerate and destructive, not only to the individual but to the greater world, pragmatists such as Rorty allow for room for ethical projects that focus on individual survival and development, even as they acknowledge a preference for ethical choices that serve the world beyond the individual.

 

At the same time, the author has observed a few indications that E. S. has adapted the constraints of her own narcissism to reflect her current circumstances. One of the key distortions of most narcissists’ perceptions of reality is the delusion that others see them as the center of the universe, just as they see themselves. While E. S. remains dismissive of evidence to the contrary, and often ascribes others’ motivations to admiration of her physical and intellectual superiority, occasional responses - often shrouded in sarcasm - reveal the vulnerability of her commitment to this perception.

 

For example, the author encountered E. S. drinking a Midori sour (heavy on the Midori) from a Rainforest Cafe souvenir cup with LED lights in the base, adding tiny green splatters to the pages of her copy of _Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature,_ which she had already defaced extensively with pink highlighter, bits of leopard-print scrapbooking tape, and dog-eared corners. “Rorty makes more sense when you’re wasted,” she asserted.

 

“I respectfully disagree,” the author stated, although he covertly suspected that her position held some validity; Rorty’s rejection of a consistent rational framework and embrace of gut relativism harmonizes with inebriation.

 

“Don’t be silly,” she replied. “We both know you don’t respect me. And I think ol’ Rortypants would say that you do more practical good by admitting it.” When the author grimaced, she beamed and added, “See, I’m getting it. Right?”

 

E. S.’s narcissism did not in this instance preclude her from recognizing that others - namely the author - do not hold her in the same astronomically high regard in which she holds herself. Moreover, her self-centeredness allowed her to gravitate toward a facet of Rortian ethics that many Cartesian-minded readers find objectionable, and to recast that facet in a favorable context. While Rorty’s relativist ethics leave room for social deception, such as lying to save another’s feelings, they urge against the use of such polite untruth when it serves the practitioner more than the recipient. For example, the author’s feigned respect for E. S. served to preserve his own self-image as a kind person, rather than to truly spare E. S.’s feelings. E. S. reminded the author in this moment that he sometimes rejects pragmatist approaches because they do not permit the individual to avoid awkward or confrontational social choices, on the frequent occasions when upholding easy social norms either causes active harm or passively avoids a communication that would benefit others.

 

This is far from the only time when E. S.’s narcissistic worldview has brought her insight into Rortian frameworks that more conventional students of philosophy have tended to overlook or underanalyze. Most individuals, when presented with a wide range of philosophical approaches in an introductory course, come to develop a hybrid ethics, often leaning toward the approaches of one or two philosophical strains but generally incorporating others as well. E. S., on the other hand, declared ownership of Rorty immediately after our discussion of his ideas.9 As we explored other ethical constructions in subsequent sessions, E. S. often positioned herself as a pragmatist devil’s advocate, dismissing alternatives as beholden to _a priori_ designations of good and evil. It was sometimes clear that E. S.’s argumentative defense of Rortian perspectives was an attempt to disguise her failure to do the reading, or to score points against a companion who seemed to be making progress in a fashion that had attracted the author’s approval.

 

In one particularly salient case, E. S.’ s predilection toward Rortian pragmatism, rather than a more hybrid ethical framework, led her to an ultimately valuable paradox. She noted rapidly that one of the cornerstones of Rorty’s philosophical framework is a rejection of mind-body dualism, which he rejects as an artifact of Platonic and Cartesian epistemological thought. “If there’s no such thing as a soul,” she posited with her customary tone of defiant sarcasm, “then there’s no such thing as a Good Place or a Bad Place. Which means that either we’re not really dead, or Rorty is full of shirt.”

 

The author hoped that this signaled her willingness to move on from a framework that he had long since begun to find tiresome, but instead, she thumbed urgently through _Philosophy and Social Hope,_ a work that she had not been directly assigned, but rather presumably demanded of Janet. After several minutes of aggressive flipping while muttering that Rorty needed to get the fork over trying to make sense out of Hegel, she jerked her head up triumphantly and said, “Here. Page 34,” then quoted the following:

  

> To say that one should replace knowledge by hope is to say much the same thing: that one should stop worrying about whether what one believes is well grounded and start worrying about whether one has been imaginative enough to think up interesting alternatives to one’s present beliefs.10

 

Although the author instinctively understood why E.S. had invoked this line of reasoning, he nonetheless initiated a Socratic response. “How does ‘replacing knowledge by hope’ resolve the paradox you proposed?”

 

She rolled her eyes. “Because, okay. When we got here, we _knew_ we were in the Good Place. And now we ‘know’ we’re in the Bad Place. 11 But that shouldn’t mean that we’re not in the Plato zombie cave anymore. We can’t just go around believing that since we rejected the first dumb belief, the second dumb belief is actually right. We have to use our imagination.”

 

Impressed with her deconstruction of a concept complex enough that the author himself had been vexed by it, the author asked, “So you don’t think this is the afterlife at all?”

 

“I _hope_ it’s not,” E.S. said. “I hope there’s some other explanation. Because you and I both died in really stupid ways.”

 

The author remains uncertain as to whether E. S.’s choice to lean on the word “hope” was an expression of sarcasm, or a further allusion to Rorty’s rejection of conventional epistemologies in favor of dynamic belief sets that adjust to new information as well as to what is most useful to the individual. Rorty refers to this as an ethics of social hope. The author wishes to believe that this phrasing did not escape E. S.’s notice, a belief that Rorty would validate as both useful and adaptive to the circumstance.

 

Other incidents reinforce the hypothesis that E. S. indeed demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of  the subtler and more complex precepts of Rorty’s pragmatism. This evidence most often arises in the context of E. S.’s attempts to, in her words, “troll” the author, taunting him for his devotion to the study of moral philosophy and also challenging his distaste for utilitarian and pragmatist ethics.

 

The most striking of these incidents occurred while E. S. and the author were intimate, and specifically engaged in a sex act for which E. S. credits herself with exceptional execution. While the author’s experience in the matter is not sufficiently broad to make an empirical determination as to whether E. S.’s pride is warranted, he was satisfied in this particular encounter, and expressed his pleasure at her efforts. Smirking from between his legs, E. S. posited, “But how do we know if I’m really giving you a blow job? Maybe this is an elaborate set-up to torture you for your sexual insecurity or your fear of losing me. Maybe I’m not really [E. S.] at all.”

 

The author almost embarked on a lecture on the limits of epistemological exploration before realizing that he had been baited. “Not now, [E. S.],” he said.

 

She dug her fingernails into his thigh, lightly at first, then deeper, evincing an enervating pain. “Say epistemology is bullshirt,” she commanded. “Say it.”

 

The author sighed. “According to all of the philosophers you show even the barest willingness to agree with, it’s reasonable to believe that we’re doing what it looks like we’re doing, and since that belief is rational, I should enjoy it rather than worrying about how it’s going to come back to torment me later. Even though it is going to torment me later, somehow or other.”

 

She quirked one side of her mouth in an ironic half-smile. “Yeah, it’s probably going to come back to bite us both. Too late now, though, I guess.” She resumed her activity. For weeks afterward, whenever conversation turned toward epistemology - either in the classroom or in informal discourse - E. S. made vulgar gestures to remind me of her opinion of the area of inquiry. As she is far from alone in perceiving epistemological questions as a self-pleasuring exercise, the author acquiesced to her objections. Later, he realized that she had cornered him into an acceptance of this precept of pragmatist thought as a foundational assumption, a fact which he resented, although he admired her ingenuity and tenacity in leading him to it.

 

**Conclusion**

 

As yet, the author’s interactions with E. S. have not been extensive enough to definitively conclude that her affinity for Rortian pragmatism has enabled her to form a consistent ethical framework. While E. S. at times does arrive at sound ethical decisions on pragmatic grounds, she just as often uses her pragmatist approach as an excuse for self-serving or hurtful behavior. Nonetheless, her fondness for this approach, and for Rorty in particular, do provide hope that she will, over time, increasingly use her philosophical knowledge as a tool for making well-reasoned ethical decisions rather than for justifying unconsidered actions after the fact. This hope is bolstered by the following anecdote, which the author leaves as an illustration of the validity of Rortian pragmatism as a guiding philosophical approach.

 

After one especially protracted and exhaustingly repetitive debate, E. S. called upon a mediator in the form of Janet. “Janet, can you settle a bet?”

 

As Janet blinked into view, I protested, “There is no bet. I didn’t agree to one.”

 

E. S. sighed and glared at me. “Fine. Janet, can you settle a dispute?”

 

“Of course,” Janet said.

 

“Is Richard Rorty in the Bad Place?”

 

“You can’t ask her that,” I hissed. “She can’t answer that.”

 

E. S. batted her eyes at Janet, once again demonstrating her faith in her own ability to manipulate others on the basis of her physical appearance. “Rortysauce would want us to know.”

 

“I can verify that you’re correct about that,” Janet said. “Working.” After a moment of apparent contemplation while she retrieved the data, Janet confirmed, “Richard Rorty is in the Good Place.”

 

“How the fork did an atheist, pragmatist, relativist philosopher make it to a dimension of the afterlife that he, himself, did not believe in?” I exclaimed.

 

“There are only two notes in his file,” Janet said. “The first states, ‘Generally nice guy who used his power to advance social justice.’ The second states, ‘Despite rumors to the contrary, the review board appreciates and encourages well-considered and well-intentioned dissent.’”

 

When pressed for further information about this review board, Janet became fervently and anxiously silent.

* * *

 

**Notes**

1 Plato, _The Laws,_ trans. Trevor J. Saunders (New York: Penguin Books, 1975), 150.

2 Jonathan Lear, “Plato’s Politics of Narcissism,” _Apeiron_ 26, no. 3/4 (1993): 150-151.

3 Paul Rigby, _The Theology of Augustine’s Confessions_ (New York: Cambridge, 2015), 64.

4 Quoted in Michael W. Hickson, “The Moral Certainty of Immortality in Descartes,” _History of Philosophy Quarterly_ 28, no.3 (2011), 229.

5 Allen W. Wood, “Does Hegel Have an Ethics?” _The Monist_ 74, no. 3 (1991), 361.

6 John Dewey, _Reconstruction in Philosophy_ (New Jersey: Henry Holt and Co., 1920), 5-6.

7 Richard Rorty, “Against Unity,” _The Wilson Quarterly_ 22, no. 1 (1998): 28.

8 E. S. and the author discussed the list of symptoms presented by Psychology Today, as reported by Janet, available at https://www.psychologytoday.com/conditions/narcissistic-personality-disorder .

9The use of the term “ownership” is neither metaphorical nor hyperbolic. At the following discussion session, when one of her companions expressed an affinity toward Rorty’s passion for social justice despite deprecating his methods, E. S. snapped, “You can’t have the Rortster. He’s mine.”

10 Richard Rorty, _Philosophy and Social Hope_ (New York: Penguin, 1999), 34.

11Janet’s transcription of this conversation made the distinction between sarcastic registers through the use of italics and quotation marks. Those who have not encountered E.S. personally have resultingly been spared the frustration of untangling which type of sarcasm she has elected to employ from moment to moment.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Much love to my very reassuring beta, and gratitude to my local public library for providing free access to JSTOR. All of the citations are real.
> 
> I'm aware that most philosophy scholarship doesn't include a discrete Methodology section, and that this is formatted more like a social science paper. I let the Rule of Funny guide my decisions here.


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